I don't want to alarm anyone, but Christmas is coming; in fact it's less than two months away. Now, it's still entirely too early to be putting up tinsel and whatnot, but it is absolutely time to get on the waiting lists for these new Christmas cookbooks! I'm personally very much looking...

Thanksgiving is maybe one of our simpler holidays. We give thanks for what we have and we eat good food. The giving thanks part usually doesn't require a lot of preparation; maybe just a few minutes quiet consideration. The good food, on the other hand, can sometimes be a challenge. Last November...

A new series of cookbooks has recently caught my attention. The My Cooking Class series includes Vegetable Basics , Sauce Basics , Chocolate Basics , Steaming Basics and Middle Eastern Basics . All the books have large color photographs to illustrate every recipe. I'm looking forward to spending...

I've always thought if you can read a recipe, you can cook, more or less. However, I've been told this simply isn't true and that there are actually very smart people who fail miserably in the kitchen. This past summer O'Reilly , a publisher I usually associate with software manuals,...

Cupcakes are for everyone! Who doesn't love cupcakes? They're fun, they're delicious and they can be easy to make. There are more than a dozen books devoted to cupcakes here at EVPL! Hello, Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake? by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson are good choices if you want...

A friend just let me know that TODAY is World Vegetarian Day ! It turns out the whole month of October is Vegetarian Awareness Month! Have you ever considered going vegetarian or vegan ? Maybe you could try it out this month. Why not try something new? Look for vegetarian options at the Fall Festival...

Halloween is almost here and new books for Halloween have been arriving at the library over the past month. Here are the two that have me most excited: Ghoulish Goodies by Sharon Bowers is a whole 150-page cookbook just for Halloween! Extreme Halloween by Tom Nardone covers a broader range of Halloween...

When I decided to become a vegetarian in the fall of my third year at University of Southern Indiana, Carole Raymond's Student's Vegetarian Cookbook quickly became a favorite of mine. It isn't intimidating like a lot of the vegetarian cookbooks I'd looked at before it. Its recipes generally...

If you're ready to try cooking something more than Hamburger Helper, check out these books: College Cooking: Feed Yourself and Your Friends by Megan & Jill Carle, The Healthy College Cookbook by Alexandra Nimetz, Jason Stanley & Emeline Starr and The Everything College Cookbook: 300 Hassle...

Whether you're a total novice or a more seasoned cook, Notes on Cooking: A Short Guide to an Essential Craft is a great basic book on the ins and outs of cooking - just basic cooking. Not French cooking, or Indian Cooking, or sushi-making - just the basic rules of the kitchen. For instance - did...

Lately I have been doing a bit of catching up on my reading. My most recent audiobook is Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, read by the author. For those of you unfamiliar with the book and /or new movie, Julie Powell was a young New Yorker in a dead-end job and seeking some sort of meaning in her life...

So far, I have recieved tomatoes from three different gardens this year, which is great because I love tomatoes! They're beautiful and taste good with almost anything; one of my favorite, simple things to do is put them on a grilled cheese sandwich. Yum! Last week, a new cookbook, The Too Many Tomatoes...

Recently I was looking for a lemon recipe and nothing in my cookbooks seemed right. When I turned to a friend for advice, she recommended two easy-to-search websites, All Recipes and Recipe Zaar . My friend and I looked together and ended up choosing a lemon cream cupcake recipe with a 4.4 (out of 5...

In January, I made a New Year's Resolution (even though I don't like New Year's Resolutions) to cook and bake more. I've used recipes from many sources but some of the best have been from Baking Illustrated by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine. I've made the banana bread...

You never know what you might find when you go exploring on authors' websites. Maybe there will be a contest - a chance to win a signed book or other prize. Perhaps some short stories about minor characters in an ongoing series. With Google or other search engines it can be easy to locate author...